Timothy C. May says:
One thing I've found is that the electronic age has made me more careful about insulting specific people. The Kibo Effect, call it. (Hi, Kibo!)
I wasn't insulting Jude (whoever she is; I don't know her and have no reason to have an opinion on her); I was insulting "Wired".
Frankly, I'd rather see a story on "Zippies," about which I'd heard nothing substantive before, than Yet Another Ted Nelson Story, about which I've heard entirely too much over the past decade.
On the other hand, "Wired" used to interview people who were fairly unknown but important -- there are an endless supply of such people. When was the last time you saw an interview with someone like Rick Adams, for example? He's not necessarily the *most* important person on the planet, but being the proprietor of a company that runs a good fraction of the world's internet connectivity and just got partially bought by Microsoft, he's pretty important in a lot of ways, and I legitimately know little about him. How about an article on the economics of cellphone fraud -- a multi-billion dollar industry created by the NSA and its desire to stop encryption from being used. Lots of cool stuff out there to report on -- no need to do fashion-fluff.
I know some folks in the crypto/PGP community who were quite miffed that such "marginal" folks as Eric Hughes, John Gilmore, and I were featured on the cover of "Wired" 1.2 two years ago...
Two years ago, the average article in "Wired" was worth reading -- informative, cutting edge, accurate, and about something important. Today, the articles are more likely to be about weird hangers on from the cultural fringes mumbling weird deconstructionist ravings about obscure topics. I've found an average of only one decent article per issue lately -- and I have no doubt they'll fix that soon. Perry